Half and Half
by Anne Camp aka Obi-quiet
Summary: Ed and Al have done everything in their power to make their lives in the new world normal. They both have families, new lives and new professions. Then their children go missing and the only clues to find them lie in the Elrics' old Alchemy notes-Discont
1. Prologue: Missing

Author's note: This is subject to change if I deem it necessary and my new beta reader points anything out.

This is a second generation story, IE: Ed and Al's kids. It's also based firmly off of the Anime and not the Manga.

Pairings: Original Character pairings out of necessity, later on a little hinting at EdxWinry, also RoyxHawkeye

xXx

_Prologue_

He ran.

He didn't pay attention to the loud thumps his boots made against the worn wood, or how hard his breaths came, or how quickly his hart thumped against his rib-cage (he could have sworn it was threatening to break bones). He'd never lost his ability to focus (obsession with focusing although he wouldn't admit it) for close to twenty years on this world.

"You check down here," he yelled to the figure behind him, and then took the steep stairs two at a time (which was not easy on his still smallish frame) without even looking behind him to see if the other acknowledged him, and sprinted across the short landing.

He burst through the door with barely a pause as his golden-brown eyes almost desperately scanned the room. A boy's room, fairly young by the looks of the few toys and articles of clothing scattered around. It seemed particularly bare for the age of the children that usually occupied this part of the house, but the war had been hard on everyone and few things were there to be thrown about, even home-made.

That's why it stood out on the bed. A very thick journal that looked as if it had been used and abused throughout the ages, despite the fact that he'd been there when his younger brother had bought it only fifteen or sixteen years ago.

"No," he whispered and rushed over to the bed, picking up the book as if he'd been hoping for an illusion. His eyes scanned the front, and then he opened the pages, looking through them, his distress increasing with every clump of pages he almost ripped out with the energy he turned them. The neat writing stood out on the page, fully illustrated with notes and everything. All the essentials, and a few that weren't lay within this book. "No!" he hissed again and turned to dash out of the room. It all made sense now: the distancing, the strange behavior...and now the disappearance.

"AL!" he yelled as he ran out of the room, and practically flew down the stairs. Before he'd reached the bottom, his younger brother was there, looking up with a worried expression. Al rarely got worried, usually being the calm and more thoughtful of the two men. Seeing that look on his brother's face did very little to calm Edward Elric's nerves.

"Nii-san," he said, almost hopefully. "What's w--" he stopped and looked at the book his older brother held out in front of him. His eyes widened in surprise, and the worried expression deepened into one of outright horror. "Where...?" he started to ask.

Eward Elric shook his head, "On his bed." He watched as Al's face paled several shades.

"No..." he repeated what the first man had said only seconds before.

Ed opened his mouth to respond, but the front door flying open drew both of their attentions. A small, thin woman stood in the door, silhouetted against the fading daylight outside. Normally, this woman wouldn't have the strength to do much more than hurt a fly...and yet she looked menacing enough this time that both men took a step back.

"Edward," she said, her voice dangerously quiet. He'd never heard her talk in that tone. She began advancing towards them, not even bothering to take off her shoes by the door as she normally would have, her fierce look planted on the blond-haired man.

"Honey," Al walked slowly up to the woman. Apparently he knew when to handle things with care. "Honey, listen--" she turned her gaze to him, and froze instantly in his tracks.

"Oh, I listen," the normally sweet-mannered woman said through gritted teeth and a heavy accent. "I love explanation," she held up a piece of paper clutched in her hand. With that, her glare returned to Edward, and she continued to walk forward. "Tell," she growled and thumbed to her chest, indicating she wanted them to inform her, "Where. My. CHILDREN?!"

Edward looked down at the book in his hands, and then up to one of the few people they'd found in their travels who hadn't grown to be taller than him, and winced, muttering a few choice words under his breath. Then he looked to Al for support, but he looked rather helpless at this point.

"Nii-san..." he said softly.

"Yeah, Al," Edward sighed, the wince never leaving his face. "I know. Let's just get this over with." With that he edged past the woman, and gestured to the living room. This was not going to be pretty.


	2. Important Please Read

Important Update:

Alright, for those of you reading my stories (THANK YOU SO MUCH, BTW) I believe you deserve an explanation as to why things have been going so long without updates.

First, I got a new job that works the living daylights out of people. I'm not complaining except that I wasn't able to write for as often as I would have liked.

Second, my computer died. Kind of difficult to work on stories when for the last few months, I've kind of been mooching off of my roomate's computer, and had little access to my stories. However, I was able to save them (which is a good thing, seeing as I probably wouldn't have been able to motivate myself to rewrite anything) so I have several more chapters on just about all of my stories.

Thirdly, I have had a wedding, and some very serious health problems with a very close family member, so any extra time has been taken up by that recently.

And last, I honestly didn't know if anyone (including my beta readers) were still reading this. So...I'm going to be posting some chapters up, but they will not be beta read, just so I can save some time. If my beta readers still WANT to be my beta readers, please reply to this. I'd really appreciate it, seeing as my e-mail account is rather full and I won't be able to find anyone's address. sigh

So, thank you for all of your patience. I WILL be updating soon.

Sincerely,

Anne Camp


	3. Chapter 1

_Three Years, Nine Months Earlier..._

"Nii-san," Al spoke softly as they looked at one of two journals they'd spent so many years taking notes on. "Are you sure?"

Edward didn't respond, instead staring at the cheap covering that had long since cracked and begun to peel off like it had betrayed him horribly, yet only his eyes showed this emotion and he glared as if he could bore holes into the book and the scattered papers beneath. His face could have been carved from stone for all the emotion it portrayed.

"We can't chance them getting this. We can't let them make the same mistakes we did," he said it matter-of-factly, but an underlying tightness laced his words. The book and papers lay in the middle of the room, in the center of a large medium-sized circle and several elaborate lines decorating the interior.

Al sighed and rubbed the back of his head, running his hand through his short hair, only a shade darker than Ed's. The gesture meant something was on his mind, and Ed waited patiently. Al had learned a long time ago to not just accept something if he didn't like it. Normally, he found it difficult to stand up and question something, but he'd grown in the past few years as well. He'd voice his opinion soon enough.

"Edward," he said softly. For a moment, it struck Ed how they'd begun to pick up on the local culture and way of speaking. For years, he'd rarely called his brother anything but just that: nii-san or brother. In this country, though, it was not considered disrespectful to use an older sibling's name. "Any chance at making anything to help her is lost with this."

Ed didn't look up. "I know," he replied in the same tone. "But you said it yourself; it was a dead end to begin with. Besides," his hands started to clench, although he still never moved his eyes from the linoleum floor and the circle with the papers. "I'm not going to lose both of them. Not like that."

With that, Al sighed and took out the pocket-knife he carried around with him. "Do you want me to do it?"

"No," Ed said. "It's my book, and my notes. You do it when we find yours." With that, Al nodded and handed the knife over. After a second, Ed pushed down any lingering fears, and cut the end of his finger slightly. Then he closed his eyes, concentrated on the energy, and laid his hands on the circle. Almost immediately, it began to glow. Then, the papers and the book began to glow as well.

The two brothers watched for several moments until the light had died down. In the middle of the circle, a little, wooden soldier stood, looking stalwartly forward.

Al's eyes widened in surprise. "Nii-san?" he asked.

"I figure it should have gone to him anyways. Hope he's not too old for this," the blond-haired man stood up and began walking to the door. "This way, no one can ever try _it_ again," he turned and looked over his shoulder for a moment before continuing towards the Christmas tree that had been set up on one side of the small living room. "It dies with us, right Al?"

For a moment, his brother continued to kneel on the floor, before he sighed himself. "You're right, brother. It just feels like we're giving up."

For a few moments, Ed didn't say anything. Then he turned his back on the kitchen and the table that he and his brother had moved to perform the alchemy.

"Yeah," he whispered, his face once again taking on a stone-like appearance. "I know."

Neither one of them noticed the little boy who knelt on the snow-covered ground just outside the window that had been jammed open only a slight crack that no one had gotten around to fixing yet. They didn't see the horror or the shock on his face as he got up and stumbled forward for a few moments in a stupor, before he seemed to recover from his surprise. Then, he made a sudden b-line for the neighboring house through the crisp December air.

"But I thought you said you'd never give up!" he whispered under his breath, not really understanding why he felt the way he did, or why tears now ran down his cheeks. All he knew, was that he needed to get away, and the best place to do that was with his cousins...although with how he felt, he might just have to move in this time to calm down.

xXx

Eric Elric paced back and forth in front of his two cousins as they watched him with grim faces.

"But Aunt Ooljee can't die!" Trisha said softly from her position on the ground where she clung to her home-made doll. At first, she had just stared at Eric in shock, but now her eyes looked up at the two boys for confirmation in vain. Her older brother sat on the bed looking firmly at his feet, while her cousin continued to wear a hole in the bedroom floor. "Uncle Ed said he'd never let that happen!" She said finally, her eyes hardening.

Eric stopped at that, standing with his hands balled into fists. "He lied," he said softly. "My stupid..." he paused as several extreme words filtered to mind, but none seemed to rise to the challenge of describing what he felt at the moment, so he simply continued "...father lied." He turned quickly at that and started pacing again, looking angrier and angrier, his brown eyes flickering with fire.

"There has to be something else," Brandon muttered. "Something we don't know."

"There's not!" Eric turned on the other boy, causing the older one on the bed to look up in shock. "He said that his project was the only way to save her, and then he gets rid of it all! Just like that! What else could that mean?"

Trisha looked like she was about to cry. "B-but why would he give up?" she asked, the dark, slightly slanted eyes that she'd inherited from her mother had grown large, wordlessly begging her cousin to stop.

At this, Eric faltered and seemed to deflate. After several minutes of silence, he plopped on the bed next to Brandon. "Because he caught me trying it."

Brandon's own eyes widened at that and he looked over. "Whoa...you actually tried that...stuff?"

Eric looked slightly offended. "Of course I tried it! I'm not afraid!"

"Did it work?" Trisha asked, now looking on with curiosity and brushing her dark hair out of her face. At this, Eric looked slightly smug, although it seemed hardly visible through his current depression.

"Yeah," he said. "It worked."

The two siblings exchanged glances before turning back to their cousin. "Hey Eric," Brandon said slowly.

"Yeah?" he asked absent-mindedly.

"Do you think you could teach us?"

xXx

That's how the whole thing had started. The three of them would disappear for hours on end and practice this new "magic" called Alchemy, trying different ideas, drawing different designs in the circles and studying the reactions of each. Trisha found it horribly boring to write things down for later study, but the other two didn't have much of a problem keeping their own, crude journals.

Still, like three children trying to rediscover quantum physics they didn't get very far, instead coming to dead end after dead end, and not understanding enough to be able to even start getting around any problems they came across. It didn't occur to them that the entire theory worked around the flow of energy or was more of a science than some strange, miraculous occurrence. They didn't understand why they could seem to make this "magic" work in the first place. They couldn't possibly know the different laws that governed even basic Alchemy. All they knew was what little information Eric had read from his father's book, which had not only been encoded but had consisted of more or less notes of a very experienced but seriously rusty alchemist.

All of this ran through young Eric's mind for what seemed like the billionth time as he focused hard on the lump of dirt in front of him. He had to concentrate on the exact amount of whatever he'd decided to work on, be it dirt, or leaves, or grass. For some reason, that came fairly easy to him. What he didn't find easy...

"Darn!" he said, realizing his mother would scold him for the harsh language (although he'd heard his father use even harsher) that he caught from some of the boys at school (actually, he'd heard some even worse things from them as well).

"What's wrong?" Trisha asked in a bored tone.

"I can't make it bigger!" he growled, stood up and walked to the center of the crudely drawn circle and picked up the rather misshapen, solid block that had been a handful of dirt only a few seconds before. "And I can't figure out why!"

The girl blinked and turned to look at him with an encouraging smile. "Maybe you can't," she said.

Eric looked down at the piece of...whatever it was now. "What do you mean?" he asked. She shrugged, and Eric frowned. Trisha usually found things boring because she could comprehend the world around her rather easily, and so things lost their appeal. Although some of her teachers at school wouldn't dare to admit it, she could put most of the boys in her class (and even some of her teachers) to shame when it came to mental capacity. Something that Eric found himself more and more jealous of as their little "experiment" continued. He also found it incredibly annoying that she had that kind of brain power, and couldn't seem to motivate herself to do much more than have a tea party or play with her doll, although she always separated herself from the other girls in her class because "they were boring" or "they never did anything new" or her favorite "they only want to be good guys". That last one had worried their teacher slightly, but even after a call home, nothing had happened or changed.

"Maybe whatever you put in is what you get out," she said simply.

He growled, exasperated. "That can't be it! We were able to change those rocks into...well..."

"Other rocks," she finished, reached back and grabbed her short, black hair, draping it over her face, then taking it off, then draping it again following each movement with half-lidded eyes, acting more bored than ever.

Eric humphed. That couldn't be it. "They were prettier," he grumbled.

"Where's Brandon?" Trisha whined, rolling over onto her stomach. They'd found a fairly secluded lot near their house that had enough brush and weeds to hide them from prying eyes, and had decided to come there every day after school to practice their Alchemy.

"I don't know. He said he had to run home and get something for class," Eric tossed the block over his shoulder and reached for his backpack, pulling out his notebook and scribbling something down in large print. 'Mabee we cant chanj things in to bigger things.' He sighed and closed the book again. Maybe these were the kind of problems his father had run into. If so, no wonder he gave up.

At that thought, his eyes snapped open. His father…giving up…he would not! Before he knew it, he'd thrown his notebook across the property, watching it come to land harshly about 15 feet away, kicking up a small amount of dirt and weeds. He would never give up! No matter how frustrating! He would not end up like his stupid father who just gave up and sat back to watch her die.

"Oh look!" Trisha ignored the display and lifted herself onto her knees, pointing to the edge of the property. Brandon, looking particularly haggard, as if he'd run the entire way from their house, paused at the edge of the field, panting heavily. "Hi Brandon!" the 10-year-old grinned and waved.

Eric took a deep breath, and walked over to his notebook, picking it up before looking up as his cousin came jogging (rather slowly) towards them.

"Guys!" he panted, stopping in front of them.

"What's wrong?" Eric and Trisha asked at the same time. It took Brandon several more seconds before he could gasp out an answer.

"I...had to...get...something...from Mom's...chest for show and tell," he gulped and looked up at them, excitement dancing in his own dark eyes. Eric blinked. He really didn't know what to expect with that kind of an expression from his cousin. Maybe they were having a particularly good dessert that night or something. "So," he stood up, still panting slightly, "I asked Mom if I could take something from her Country. She said she hadn't opened that chest since we moved, but I could take anything I wanted from it." With that, he held up a lumpy, cloth bag (the one his mother usually used for groceries), "and look what I found!"

Raising an eyebrow in question, Eric took the bag, ignoring Trisha coming over and peeking over his shoulder. With that, he opened the bag, and felt his jaw go slack. Two books, almost identical to the one his father had had, sat at the bottom of the sack.

"Daddy had some too?" Trisha asked. Brandon nodded enthusiastically.

Eric couldn't help but smile as he looked up at the other boy. "Brandon," he said. "When I get an allowance, I'm gonna buy you a milkshake at Townsen's."

Brandon's eyes lit up. "Really?" he asked.

"Yep!" Eric said as he reached into the bag and pulled one of the impossibly thick books out. "As soon as we finish reading these!"

Brandon's countenance fell, and his sister pouted (hoping she could get something out of the deal, by way of either default as blood relative, or cute little sister). "Right, it's not gonna happen," Brandon muttered and reached for the bag, taking the other book. "Come on, Trish," he sighed. "Lets study this one together."

Trisha made a face. "Do I have to?"

"Yes," Eric said firmly, but absently as his eyes started to drift over the page.

"I think he's already gone," Brandon grumbled and turned around to seat himself a little distance from his cousin. Sighing, Trisha reached down and grabbed her doll before waking over to her brother, and sitting down with a head on his shoulder while he opened the second book.


End file.
